


Ithaka: a ficlet collection

by orphan_account



Category: Hunter X Hunter
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-09-10
Updated: 2014-12-25
Packaged: 2018-02-16 21:19:33
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 2,455
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2284809
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>HxH ficlet collection.</p><p>1: Biske and Killua take Alluka jewelry shopping.<br/>2: While Netero prepares to face Meruem, Pariston reflects.<br/>3.  A strict drabble exercise (100 words).  Set during that scene in the York Shin arc where Kurapika teams up with Hisoka.<br/>4. Leorio brings Kurapika to visit his hometown.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. A Girl's Best Friend

Killua really doesn't cope well with older women. 

Biske tosses him another package and he catches it one-handedly, slips it into one of the brightly colored shopping bags hanging off his left elbow. Surreptitiously he checks the ornate wall clock at the far end of the store. Six hours. They've only been here six hours. Killua has undergone water torture sessions less excruciating than this shopping spree.

He keeps his mouth shut though. For one thing, that gorilla hag is sure to take any knowledge of his suffering as a good reason to prolong it. Killua is already lucky that all Biske wants to do this time is full-day shopping at York Shin's swankiest mall. (As opposed to spending a month of dowsing, mining, and cutting gemstones in the desert with their bare hands, all in the name of of nen training, which Killua was afraid she would suggest.)

For another thing - Alluka is enjoying herself, isn't she? 

Alluka's perched on a swivel stool in front of the jeweller's counter, eyes rounded in fascination as she touches the display case before her. Within the glass cage, sapphires and opals flash and glimmer atop velvet cushions. 

"Oniichan," she says, pointing to a diamond-encrusted butterfly pendant glittering within. "Look?" 

He walks over, careful not to put down Biske's several hundred thousand jenis worth of purchases, and crouches down to press his nose to the glass. "Wow, Alluka, it's beautiful."

"You should buy your sister something!" Biske says, a chiding look on her face. "Look, how about these?" Biscuit is standing behind Alluka, placing what looks like the world's most expensive hairband on top of Alluka's head. Alluka reaches up and touches the hard shimmer of the amethysts set into the band, giggling. 

"How does it look, Oniichan?" 

"You look perfect," Killua says honestly, noting the tiny price tag hanging discreetly from behind Alluka's right ear. It'll dip into their funds, but it's not like they don't have more than enough, and it's not like Killua is any good at budgeting. Money that doesn't get wasted on one thing usually gets wasted on something else. 

Biske shakes her head. "Who would have thought you were such a good older brother? When you're always so useless with women."

Alluka, to his annoyance, laughs. After six months of world travel, Alluka's unconditional love for Killua remains intact as ever. Her unquestioning adoration, however, seems to have taken a hit. 

Mostly due to overexposure to Biske. There's probably only so many times you can see your older brother flying through the air from a straight punch to the cheek before your childhood hero worship ends up somewhat less worshipful.

Well, there's no helping it. Despite Killua's numerous and well-articulated misgivings, Biske is the best person to help right now. Because -- she's right, Killua has no idea how to look after a girl. And the options for acquiring advice are limited. The Zoldyck butlers are out of the question. Palm _probably_ wouldn't go after him with a meat cleaver in front of Alluka, but Killua's not taking the chance. Kaito is -- no more a girl than Alluka is a boy, and even more prone to waving deadly bladed objects around than Palm. 

There's Mito-san, but Killua is not ready for that yet. Not ready for Gon yet. 

He pays at the cashier while Biske tries more pendants around Alluka's neck: a dragon of copper and emeralds, a platinum cartoon cat, a silver filigree leaf - finally buying the leaf for Alluka before leading them out of the store and explaining that there are five more floors in the mall to explore. Alluka cheers. Killua scowls, and then scowls some more after Biske lands a right hook that sends him flattened to the floor. He leaps to his feet at once; she gives him two new shopping parcels to carry. 

Definitely worse than a water torture session. Worth it, though. 

Living for people is so much harder than killing for them or dying for them; living for Alluka, so much harder than living for Gon was. 

(But so much more important.) 

They go to a millinery next. Alluka wants a hat embroidered with flying swan princes. Killua buys it for her. 

"You're learning," Biske says, beaming. 

He is. He know he is.


	2. Stopgap

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> While Netero prepares to face Meruem, Pariston reflects.

You became a Hunter while hunting for the missing parts of yourself.

It’s a search that began long ago in forgotten childhood. In high school you learned to catch frogs and boil them slowly, in the manner of the old-fashioned scientists, centigrade by centigrade, so that the amphibians failed to perceive the danger and allowed themselves to be cooked to death. Even earlier, in your preteens, you’d mastered the art of thumbtacking still-living butterflies to corkboards. You’d pin them via the thorax and watch the dying throes of their chitinous wings, how they fluttered in colorful madness, then slowed. Then went still.

Your explorations did not restrict themselves to destruction. Your first summer vacation during university you walked out into the desert near York Shin carrying nothing but a survival knife and a cigarette lighter and wandered there for two weeks, living off cactus fruit and condensed morning dew, walking for miles towards nowhere, while your feet blistered and the burning sun peeled your skin off in layers. The pain was satisfying but not nearly enough.

Nothing ever is quite enough, is it?

By the time you passed the Hunter Exam your interests had turned almost entirely to other human beings, as a more sophisticated source of pain and pleasure. The things that sated your hollowness grew more arcane and epicurean with time. At first, when you joined the Association, your hope had been to find and learn from other people like you.

But there is no one like you.

If you merely wanted to meet other empty humans, there are millions of these, within the Association and without. If the amoral and the cruel in themselves satisfied you, there was plenty to be found within the ranks of the Hunters. But by then you were beginning to understand that for yourself there was no final solution, only stopgaps.

Then you met Isaac Netero and the solution he offered was so long-lasting that it began to look almost permanent.

It was an easy decision to follow Netero. A man who’d stand in the mountains for five years throwing punches must surely have been mad or hollow at the time.

Naturally, Isaac Netero was insane.

His madness was nothing like yours, though. Beloved madness, eccentric genius madness, gorgeous colourful madness. The vitality of old age and the wisdom of cultivated innocence. You’re nothing like the chairman, nothing like that. You’re not beautiful and you’ll never have Netero’s charisma. The vicious emptiness that sits in the heart of your own being doesn’t conceal any kind of radiance.

But there was a part of Netero that enjoyed what you had to bring, and a place for you among his Zodiacs. And you enjoyed hurting him and his Zodiacs in return.

(He had fun too.)

It was always a stopgap solution, but you wouldn’t have minded if it lasted forever.

And now he’s in an airship, flying to the south of the world, a poisonous rose wrapped around his heart and the hope of battle shining in his eyes. You can’t understand that at all. One of those madnesses of his that you’ve never been able to relate to.

You’ve never quite managed to hate the chairman. You can’t manage to do it even now.

What’s going to happen when the temporary solution is over?

Who will keep you from destroying everything now?


	3. transaction

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A strict drabble exercise. (100 words) Set during that scene in the Genei Ryodan arc where Kurapika teams up with Hisoka.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Originally written April 2006.

**transaction**  
Despite his mental preparation it was a shock to the spirit, the moment he left the chaos ensuing in the world outside, and entered the room, night-dark and empty save for expertly controlled nen and an offering of cards; if hatred were an option Kurapika would have hated the way Hisoka could read him perfectly, hated how  _he_  understood so clearly the murderous simplicity of the other man, and what it implied about himself; but  _for this cause, I am willing to become everything I despise_ , and all he said was, “Tomorrow, same time,” - accepting all that had to come.


	4. Homecoming

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Leorio takes Kurapika to his hometown.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Written for [3beef](http://3beef.tumblr.com/) for the HxH Secret Santa 2014.

Dawn is approaching when their airship arrives at its destination. Leorio looks out the plexiglass windows and sees pale light tinting the horizon, illuminated against the curved shadows of the mountains that surround his hometown. 

Below them, the city lies spread out like a picnic blanket. Tiny houses all hodgepodge, connected by a web of roads that lie dark and empty this early in the day. As the airship descends, signs of activity become visible to the naked eye: cars, the occasional truck. 

“It's a bigger city than I had assumed,” says Kurapika. “For some reason I'd thought you'd come from somewhere more provincial.” 

Leorio narrows his eyes, then lets the potential insult slide. Too early in the morning to be picking fights with Kurapika. Instead, he presses one finger against the plexiglass and points out the landmarks of his childhood. His elementary school, the local wet market, the football stadium where he and Pietro used to cheer on their home team. 

“We used to go fishing from that pier,” he says, indicating the docks, where already they can see the day's business commencing, ferries emerging from their berths and making their way across a calm, grey-green sea. “Can't say we ever caught much. The best fishing spots are further along the coast; or you can take a boat out, follow the fishermen's routes. But we didn't get to do that often.”

Kurapika doesn't answer, although Leorio knows he's listening. They've been travelling for two days and while for the first few hours there was plenty of conversation, more than Leorio's ever had with Kurapika if truth be told, they've hit a point where both of them are running out of words. 

Kurapika was never one for small talk anyways. 

The airship descends towards its mooring pole. A flight stewardess's voice sounds cheerily across the PA system, advising passengers to be seated. Leorio and Kurapika remain standing on deck, watching the sunrise, until the time comes to disembark. 

A swipe of their licenses and they bypass customs entirely. The airport officers are almost obsequious. Hunters don't often visit this coastal city. When he signed up for the exam, at the age of nineteen, Leorio had never even met a Hunter. 

Leorio would like to keep it that way. The cities where Hunters prefer to hang out are usually poor places to be a child, to grow up, to raise a family, to be happy.

“I booked a room at the Hill Hotel,” Leorio says, as they emerge from the arrivals lounge into the taxi bay outside. The autumn air is cool and humid against their skin. “It's about ten kilometres away. We could take a taxi or we could walk?” 

Kurapika prefers to walk, so they do that. It's not the most picturesque of journeys. Mostly it's industrial area, unchanged since Leorio's boyhood. Corrugated iron warehouses, grey rectangular factories emanating smoke from gigantic chimneys. Small struggling trees line the sidewalks, and the occasional pigeon flutters alongside the chain-link fences. 

GPS suggests that the walk to the Hill Hotel should take two hours. Walking at a comfortable pace, they do it in twenty minutes. Having minimal baggage helps. Both of them have always travelled light. 

Their hotel sits at the heart of the city, amid a jumble of glass-curtained office buildings and shopping malls. Marble stairs, a revolving door entrance, bellboys that tend assiduously to your needs. When Leorio was young he dreamed of being able to book a room in a place like this. 

Now that he can afford it many times over, he'd rather stay with his parents. But Kurapika wouldn't agree to that, and besides, Leorio's family is safer if he keeps them at a distance from his life as a Hunter. His own work as a Medihunter isn't exactly at the more lethal end of of the spectrum, but he's never quite left the spotlight since the chairman elections took place years ago. A Zodiac member will always be a target. 

If he had to do it all over again, would he still have taken the Hunter Exam? With the wisdom of hindsight there are easier ways to make money, to save lives. But Leorio can't bring himself to regret meeting Gon or Killua.

Or Kurapika. 

They check into the hotel and Leorio begins leafing through the travel brochures displayed in the main lobby, telling Kurapika about the local attractions. They should start by visiting the docks for brunch, Leorio says, the street food there is famous. Then there's a local history museum and an art gallery at the city square – not Leorio's sort of thing, but Kurapika will love it. 

“We can go to the art and craft markets in the afternoon and then stop by my house for dinner.”

“Dinner with your family?” Kurapika asks. He doesn't look surprised – Leorio's pretty sure he's not capable of surprising Kurapika – but he does look hesitant. 

“You don't have to if you don't want to,” he says, watching Kurapika's eyes carefully. Maybe Leorio should have thought twice before extending the invitation – but really, overthinking things is Kurapika's specialty, not his. “I can call them and let them know it'll just be me.”

Kurapika presses his lips together. “No,” he says, after he's cycled through a number of thoughts and emotions that Leorio can only begin to guess at: reluctance, curiosity, grief for his own family lost. “I'd like to come along.”

“You would? That's great,” Leorio says, and because he suddenly feels immensely pleased, his voice comes out unexpectedly gruff. Getting to know Kurapika has always been one step forward, five hundred steps back, but somehow it doesn't stop Leorio from getting all excited whenever the forward step happens. 

By the time they've put their bags in the hotel room and walked out to the docks, the sun is already high in the sky. Light spills across the ocean waves, revealing fishing boats and seagulls and the bright bobbing cones of seamark buoys. 

They sit at the pier and eat boiled octopus and deep-fried rice balls from paper bags, watching the ships and the people. They don't talk. There are a million words Leorio wants to say to Kurapika, and a million words he wants to hear, but now is not the time to say or hear them. 

They will have time in the future for every conversation, every word. Leorio hopes they will have time. In the meanwhile, Kurapika is here and so is Leorio. 

It's enough for now.


End file.
